Toying with ideas

THEY CAN be long trains but they are little ones. The tracks wind all over the drawing room (furniture pushed aside) as boys tinker around expertly and enthusiastically. Scale model locos and carriages chug along valiantly on 00 gauge tracks, managing to look delicately detailed and splendidly sturdy, all at the same time.

It was almost 100 years back that Frank Hornby invented his Meccano construction toys and started a company by the same name. By 1920, the enterprise had developed the first (and as it turned out, hugely successful) Hornby train sets which were called so after their maker. Superbly crafted in metal and powered by clockwork to begin with, time has only served to hone the Hornby fetish for perfection.

From the first electric train of 1925 which used the mains supply of 100-250 volts, they quickly moved to the safer six volts supply assisted by transformers. The company itself went through some transformations and takeovers even as it continued to innovate by moving to plastic moulding which enabled finer detailing.

Constantly expanding its popular range, it went on to include the collector's favourite Flying Scotsman in 1969 and it has been a bestseller ever since (it's arguably the world's most famous steam locomotive). Chennai's exclusive stockists, the Odyssey leisure store on Ist Main Road, Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, has Hornby's latest catalogue which is a fine testimony to extensive choices, great production values and loyalty to history.

A collector can build a set with dozens of scale-model recreations in steam, diesel and electric locomotives, train packs, coaches and freight rolling stock besides tracks and accessories which include perfectly miniaturised inns, sheds, cottages, platforms, stations, signals, level crossings, gardens, streets, pylons and even an exquisite viaduct and suspension bridge with a church and a waiting room or booking hall for those who will enjoy getting a little, well, side-tracked.

Other attractions include a virtual railway CD which allows a test run of layout and landscape on different trains as well as the glossy quarterly "official magazine of the Hornby Collector's Club" which keeps aficionados updated on all things related to this consuming hobby.

Jaipur-based India distributor, Trikut Metmin's, Ramesh Tandon, has plans to start the first Indian Railway Modeler's Club (IRMOS) which will promote similar interests. He remembers growing up with the Hornby sets his father brought from his trips abroad and remained fascinated ever since. Back then, import restrictions led to collectors improvising ingenuously, sometimes with handcrafted matchstick sleepers and plastic wheels which were machined on a lathe. Today, everything from the ravishing red princess of the Arthur Connaught steam locomotive to the gorgeous green Southern Region Composite Coach is available as the many tantalisingly presented packages of perfection limit the avid collector only by his imagination or more likely, the size of his purse.

Prices begin from Rs. 471 for a tiny six plank wagon and the bare essentials of a basic set would need a minimum of Rs. 5,000 to put together. Import surcharges contribute considerably to the prohibitive Indian price tag.

Not surprisingly, when Chennai's V.H.Ram, a retired technical translator from the Bureau of Indian Standards, heads in the direction of Odyssey, his wife admits to feeling a little nervous.

An avid collector since 1962, his fondness for train sets is matched only by his love for Western classical music and motorcycles. At first he calls "toys for boys between six and sixty". He then happily proves himself wrong citing the example of a grandnephew who became the youngest collector at age two when a Hornby was purchased by the child's doting dad as a birthday gift.

Odyssey's T. S. Ashwin says that they supply to the whole of South India and he has buyers from places as far away as Vishakapatnam and Hyderabad.

For enthusiasts, not only is the journey with trains a never ending one, but also that much better, not reaching any destination.

LALITHA SRIDHAR

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